When US exports were reported a few months ago to have risen (slightly) in August 2016, it was widely expected that that increase was the start of many to follow. It was, after all, the first positive number on the export side since the end of 2014 after more than a year and a half of nothing but contraction. In [...]
One of the biggest challenges facing central banks in this increasingly post-myth environment is that they have to deal with the consequences of those past myths. Not all that long ago, it was widely believed that a central bank just did what it wanted to do, and that was the end of all discussion. If the Federal Reserve wanted to [...]
There has to this point been one key element missing from “reflation.” Or maybe it hasn’t been missing, it just hasn’t been consistent with what I would consider that term to mean. The WTI price remains quite range-bound even though there is at the moment only wind at its back. OPEC had just pledged less production, and though US production [...]
The whole monetary issue as it pertains to the eurodollar system can be succinctly summed up as balance sheet capacity. In pure monetary terms, that is an enormous distinction. What counts as money is not what almost everyone still thinks it is, though those view should have been shifted almost a decade ago in August 2007. Money is instead “money”, [...]
The JOLTS survey continues to show a lack of acceleration in the labor market. Even previously robust Job Openings estimates have plateaued. After surging throughout 2014 and into the middle of 2015, the level of estimated job openings has been more or less the same since. That might indicate the labor market reaching saturation, or it might suggest, as all [...]
In September 2013, the BIS took a closer look at offshore corporate issuance of EM obligors. The timing could not have been more relevant, which was very likely their point in undertaking the difficult exercise. The “taper tantrum” that summer had roiled domestic bond markets in the US, but was really focused in the offshore sections of the “dollar” system. [...]
The American Enterprise Institute’s Francis Boyer award was established in 1977 by pharmaceutical firm SmithKline Beecham in memory of its former CEO. The purpose of the honor is to recognize those who have given significant contributions to government policy and social welfare. As sponsored through an erstwhile conservative think tank, the award, presented up until 2002, was given to prominent [...]
Last summer was perhaps the most pivotal period of the past two years for the economy in a number of ways. It was that moment stuck in between what was supposed to be, even if acceleration and liftoff were delayed by the “rising dollar” of late 2014, and, of course, what has become accepted that it never will. Less than [...]
The entire idea of quantitative easing is supposed to be exceedingly simple. As I showed here, in the middle of 1917 it was. The US economy and the global monetary system moving into 2017 is nothing like that one, yet the intellectual foundations for monetary policy remain as if it was. Even in operation, QE was more PR than money; [...]
Nominal personal spending grew by just over 4% in October 2016, a number that sounds impressive by virtue of what we have become used to in this economy. That was much less than the 5.2% in spending growth from the middle of 2014 just prior to the effects of the “rising dollar”, which was itself a low point for a [...]
Stay In Touch